SCRIPTURE CORNER

ABOUT HAPPINESS part one

We all long to be happy and we should be. We are created to be happy. Let us then look first at what makes us unhappy. Wordly possessions and riches do not contribute to happiness for Our Lord calls them "thorns" (Matt 13,7) which "opress and tear the soul to pieces" as St. Gregory says. Why? Because the more we possess the more we desire to have. True happiness does not live in magnificent palaces. We cannot find it in friendship or pleasures also. For sincere friendship can hardly be found:

For all seek the things that are their own.Phil 2, 21

Even apparently the most real friendship is always tainted with egoizm. Relying too much on other people is like building the castle on the sand. Pleasures are costly and end quickly followed by desire to find better substitute. Science and art does not bring happiness as well, for St. Paul says: "For we know in part. 1 Cor 13, 9. Ever increasing problems to solve cannot bring real satisfaction. It cannot be found in human love also. Someone said, "Everybody has a mother, some have a friend, but hardly anyone has one truly beloved". Human love brings usually plenty of suffering but very little happiness. The most dissapointing is the love of honours - it makes people restless from desire. No true happiness can be found in sensuality, for lust and intemperance can bring only emptiness. The parable of prodigal son says it all. Even wealthy Solomon, who had all for his disposal, concluded in the end: "But this also is vanity, and presumption of spirit" (Ecclesiastes 6,9). Emperor Franz Joseph once said: "No suffering was spared me". Highly successful Goethe confessed he had not experienced in his long life a period of "several peacefull and satisfying weeks". And in his drama "Faust" he reveals he was always restless. Even if someone is happy in the world for a longer period, there is always unpleasant perspective of the old age approaching followed by the end of life. They are happy only by name. For the eternal truth is: "The eye is not filled with seeing, neither is the ear filled with hearing. Ecclesiastes 1, 8.